By Donna Milani Luther
We are delighted to welcome new and returning families to Inly and to start another school year together. Inly—and the children who fill its classrooms—are going places. Last spring, our Lower Elementary students sat with one of the authors of the book Going Places and wowed him with their creativity and self-awareness. It is our students who will fly above the rest as they think, problem-solve, and not spend too much time relishing in their victories. Believe it or not, this is the first time that every student at our school was born in this century. These are the children who will shape the next generation’s medical devices, smart technology, and other things we can’t begin to imagine—and they will do it with persistence, knowledge, the ability to understand and follow directions, and confidence in their abilities to take their ideas to new heights.
We take every Inly student’s education very seriously. Not only do we pride ourselves in staying ahead of the educational curve, we are committed to delivering a rigorous, exceptionally challenging education in a Montessori way. That means every child will feel known, be a valued member of our community, and feel appreciated for who they are, while we help them work to their potential.
The Montessori way is not a process that lends itself to A, B, Cs and Ds. It is more individual and more intentional.
In order to help our parents better understand what, when, how, and why their children are learning Montessori lessons, Inly is piloting the reporting feature of our online record keeping system, Montessori Compass. This tracking software helps teachers map out the Montessori curriculum for each student against the Common Core. The Montessori Compass reports will give you a snapshot into our curriculum and the ongoing work of your child in his or her classroom.
It is important to note that this new parent communication is still a work in progress. We will continue to work with the software designers to refine the look and feel and user experience. We are slated to launch this reporting feature in October. The reports are dynamic and will allow all who are interested to read more about the lessons, materials, and rationale behind the Montessori works your child is being introduced to in the classroom.
These reports will not capture the entirety of work that is happening in the curriculum and programming, nor are they meant to be evaluative documents. The intent is to make the Montessori materials, curriculum, scope, and sequence more transparent. You will still receive full progress reports on each individual child—along with conferences—in November, February, and May.
Navigating Montessori Compass will be new for all, so we will sponsor a series of information sessions to help you understand this new system. The session dates will be posted shortly. We will also talk about this at our Parents Group meetings, create a webinar for those that can’t come in during the day, and have some “drop-in” sessions for Q&A. We will ask for your feedback as we roll this out. Our goal is to continue to improve this new communication. Please stay tuned for follow-up news on our roll-out of Montessori Compass.